Let’s get phygital

This paper considers the interplay of physical and digital landscaping in the Mission District (‘the Mission’), a gentrified neighborhood in San Francisco, California. Aligned with recent work on affect and people’s mediations of the linguistic landscape (Wee, 2016Wee, L. (2016). Situating affect in linguistic landscapes. Linguistic Landscape, 2(2): 105–126. ; Banda & Jimaima, 2015Banda, F. and Jimaima, H. (2015). The semiotic ecology of linguistic landscapes in rural Zambia. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 19(5): 643–670. ), I examine how the Mission is filtered – literally and figuratively – in a corpus of 16,756 Instagram posts. Comparing these digital remediated productions of place to the physical landscape, I demonstrate how both are structured semiotically along exclusionary lines. Contrary to the democratic and inclusive mythology of digital / social media, I show how users’ self-positionings and elitist stancetaking (Jaworski & Thurlow, 2009Jaworski, A. & Thurlow, C. (2009). Taking an elitist stance: Ideology and the discursive production of social distinction. In A. Jaffee (Ed.), Stance: Sociolinguistic Perspectives (pp. 195–226). New York: Oxford University Press. ; Mapes, forthcomingMapes, G. (forth.). Mediatizing the fashionable eater: Orders of elitist stancetaking in “throwback Thursday” Instagram posts. In Cynthia Gordon & Alla Tovares (Eds.), Identity and Ideology in Digital Food Discourse: Social Media Interactions Across Cultural Context. London: Bloomsbury.) effectively reinscribe privilege and reiterate gentrification of the Mission. As mining of ‘big data’ becomes increasingly valued as empirically ‘objective’ information, my analysis demonstrates geotagged content should not be viewed as a static indicator, but as a subjective, dynamic and – at times – problematic process.

Este estudio considera la interacción del paisajismo físico y el digital en Mission District (‘The Mission’), un vecindario aburguesado en San Francisco, California. En línea con trabajos recientes sobre afecto y mediación popular del paisaje lingüístico (Wee, 2016Wee, L. (2016). Situating affect in linguistic landscapes. Linguistic Landscape, 2(2): 105–126. ; Banda & Jimaima, 2015Banda, F. and Jimaima, H. (2015). The semiotic ecology of linguistic landscapes in rural Zambia. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 19(5): 643–670. ), examino como The Mission se filtra, literal y figuradamente, en un corpus de 16.756 publicaciones de Instagram. Comparando estas producciones digitales ‘remediated’ del lugar con el paisaje físico, demuestro cómo ambas están estructuradas semióticamente a lo largo de líneas excluyentes. En oposición a la mitología de democracia e inclusión de los medios digitales / sociales, muestro cómo los auto-posicionamientos y la ‘stancetaking’ elitista de los usuarios (Jaworski y Thurlow, 2009Jaworski, A. & Thurlow, C. (2009). Taking an elitist stance: Ideology and the discursive production of social distinction. In A. Jaffee (Ed.), Stance: Sociolinguistic Perspectives (pp. 195–226). New York: Oxford University Press. ; Mapes, proximamente) reinstauran el privilegio de forma efectiva y reiteran el aburguesamiento de The Mission. A medida que la minería de ‘big data’ se valora cada vez más como información ‘objetiva’ empírica, mi análisis demuestra que el contenido ‘geotagged’ no debe verse como un indicador estático, sino como un proceso subjetivo, dinámico y, a veces, problemático.